


One Cannot; Two Can

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Stars, THE STARS ARE WRONG, TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME TRAVEL, WRONG STARS!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One cannot venture into the stars. Two, however, can. Especially when one of them is quite mad, and resembles a bird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Cannot; Two Can

“There, there... easy now, just another step,” the hunter whispered, kneeling next to a wide, brown shrub for cover. His quarry didn’t move -- it had become very still, and very quiet. Only a moment ago it was making a racket loud enough to rouse the devil, but then again -- so had he the night before. 

He grinned boyishly.

And then something happened that would quite literally change his life forever. A man -- a spindly man in a brown suit stepped out of the large, blue creature he was hunting.

He stood up very abruptly. 

Anyone else might have waited -- might’ve observed the strange man and his giant blue box to see if they were a threat. But not him. He had a gun! And enough courage to power a steam tug up the Nile, if need be. He marched out with his rifle against his shoulder and shouted: “Now, excuse me!” No need to be impolite, after all! “Bit dangerous to be stepping out of wild creatures in the middle of the African Plains, don’t you think? Where have you come from?”

The man spun around; he had his hands in his pockets and a bewildered expression. His hair, the hunter noticed, stood up at the front in a rather bird-like way. By George, was this strange creature lucky to not have been shot on sight! He quite resembled a creature from the South Pacific. 

“I say!” the hunter called out again. “Are you from Oz? From the great Southern continent?” 

The bird man’s eyes narrowed. “What? Oz isn’t-- oh.” His confused expression melted. “Oh, yes. Oz.” He chuckled. “Oz. what a great name for a place. Oz. Terra Australis Incognita, and you lot shorten it down to Oz. Why wouldn’t you? Language evolves, population expands. People travel, and what do you get?”

The hunter blinked.

“Oz!” The bird man answered.

“Is that a yes, then?”

“Yes to what?”

“You are from Australia!”

The confusion returned. “No. No, no, no. No, I’m not. Why would you think I’m from Australia? Nearly got eaten the last time I was there.” He looked up at the stars. 

“By cannibals?” the hunter asked. He was so intrigued that he’d lowered his gun without noticing. 

“No,” the bird man answered, somewhat mystified by the dark sky above him. “Mire beasts. No idea how they got out, but everything turned out allright in the end!”

“By whats?”

“Where am I? Feels like Earth.” He looked down at the ground, crouched, and prodded the dirt. “Seems a bit...” He leaned down and licked the ground. The hunter stared. “No, nope -- nope. Definitely Earth,” the bird man added, scraping his tongue. “But then why?” 

“Africa,” the hunter quickly inserted. “The dark continent,” he said with a flourish. “At the turn of the century.”

“Which century?”

“...why the twentieth, of course.”

The bird man’s face lit up. “Is it really 1900? Oh, I love 1900! Not the industrialism, but the hope! The fervour of the human race as it just keeps going! Onwards and outwards into terra incognitia! That’s going to push you out into the stars, you know. Into new planets, and constellations. Not those constellations, though.” He looked up. “Because those aren’t your constellations at all, are they?”

The hunter looked up. He had decided that this man was quite mad, and that the large blue crate must have been some sort of miniaturised institution. Bit odd to have it so far out in the African Plains, and he was certain it hadn’t been there the day before, but he’d been a bit occupied, and might not have noticed it. 

Just as he hadn’t noticed that the madman who looked rather like an Australian parrot was utterly right about the stars. They were quite wrong. “Well now, what’s happened there? I can’t have got so turned around.”

“Oh no, no! It’s not you. It’s a--” 

The hunter wasn’t entirely sure what language the bird man started speaking, but it couldn’t have possibly been English. 

“Just Physics, really.”

“Sorry, what is?”

The mad man glanced at him. His head cocked to the left slightly, as though he’d just realised the hunter was there. “Are you--” his eyes scanned the hunter, taking in his clothes, his gun (his lip thinned with distaste), and his general... aloneness. “Oh, I see.”

“Sorry, but what’s happened to the stars? Why have they gone all wrong?”

“They’re not wrong,” the bird man answered. “You’re just not looking at the right ones.”

“And where have the right ones gone?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Couple of galaxies away? Maybe Carina Dwarf? It’s tricky. They want you to think you’re looking at Andromeda, but it isn’t.” He grinned. “Very clever.”

The two men stared at one another. The hunter with his gun forgotten by his side, and the bird man with his hands in his pockets, but both men had one thing in common -- a jovial, childish grin.

“Are you quite mad?” the hunter asked.

“Sometimes,” the bird man answered. “And who are you?”

The hunter strode forward, brazenly offering his hand. “John Riddell. Big game hunter, explorer.”

“Pleasure,” the bird man answered, mocking Riddell’s mannerisms as he shook. “The Doctor. Big adventure hunter, and space explorer.”

“Space?”

“Space!” The Doctor cried out, throwing his arms up and spinning around. “Millions upon millions of millennia and galaxies to see! Oh, the galaxies, Riddell. You’ve seen half the known world, and you haven’t seen anything at all, because you’ve never been out there.” He pointed to the sky.

“Well, no, but that’s quite impossible. One cannot venture into the stars.”

The Doctor smirked. “Oh, really?”

He turned on his heels and ran back into the blue box from which he’d emerged, living Riddell to watch quizzically. Previously, when he’d had his gun trained on the thing, he’d thought it might have been some hitherto unheard of bird -- perhaps a large peacock, or relative to the ostrich. But now he could seen it was neither. He was no winged creature, nor even an animal.

It was a large blue box. He ventured closer. 

The Doctor popped his head out. “Well, are you coming, or not?”

“Pardon me?”

“To the stars! You’re an explorer, aren’t you? Thought you’d jump at the chance.”

Riddell laughed. He’d never met a genuine lunatic before, but there was a first time for everything, and this man was quite astonishingly mad. “How did this box get here?” he asked, running his hand down the side. “I should have seen it yesterday, but I was... rather busy.”

“Come inside, and you’ll find out.”

“Inside? Doctor, it’s hardly big enough for my gun, let alone you and I.”

The Doctor clicked his tongue. “Suit yourself.” He stepped back into the box.

And as he slipped inside, Riddell noticed something that rather intrigued him. The Doctor was talking, but his voice was getting further and further away.

“Doctor, what are you doing? You sound as if you’re yards off.” He moved around to the front of the box, where the Doctor had gone in. “What--...” His mouth fell open. 

The Doctor looked up from what seemed to be a very complicated ship’s helm.

Riddell stepped inside, and shut the door behind him.


End file.
